Wish List

*Why?

Street festivals and parades and other sorts of crowds-in-public-space are demonstrations of the way we emerge together into something greater. These swarms are both check on our singular experiences and a celebration of them.

People want to build anthills together, to raise barns, and to build community. We love the balance of spectacle and substance, and we are living suspended between the desire to be individuals and to be together.

I’m fascinated by these tensions — by the role of emergence and play in the lives of humans and other critters — and I'm fixated on the opportunities these "civic spectacles" present for co-creation of tech for public good, specifically, and civic participation, generally. [More about this idea here.]

This parade list is a soft exploration of my own engagement, one of a few ways I study micro levels of public participation with a macro lens.